“Synchronized browsing” represents one type of video conferencing. In synchronized browsing, multiple parties, at different computers, view a common image, such as a single web page. The web page originates from a remote server, which distributed the web page to the parties through a public-access, packet-switched network, such as the Internet.
When one party, such as the leader of the conference, navigates through the page, different images will appear on the leader's computer. This navigation process is caused by commands which the leader issues to the leader's computer. The synchronized browsing system distributes these commands to the computers of the other parties, which then execute the same commands. These commands may be executed exclusively by the computers in question, or they may entail issuance of commands to the server, to attain additional data packets.
Under this process, all parties continually view the same, common, image as contained on the leader's computer, even as that image changes.